Interface including graphic representation of relationships between search results

ABSTRACT

A multi-dimensional graphic user interface displays selected types of information regarding items included in one or more databases or returned by a search in accordance with locations on a two-dimensional display area or projection of a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional area and provides for selective display of information about respective items in a database (e.g. metadata) as additional dimensions of the display which may be suppressed and/or selectively introduced to avoid user distraction or obscuring information or for comparison between screens which may indicate to a user the degree to which a particular item may or may not be germane to an issue or particular subject matter of interest. The graphic user interface thus provides an effective tool for evaluating search results and organizing detailed review thereof.

This application is a Continuation of U.S. application Ser. No.16/917,934 filed Jul. 1, 2020, which is a Continuation of U.S.application Ser. No. 16/404,682 filed May 6, 2019, now U.S. Pat. No.10,740,343, which is a Continuation of U.S. application Ser. No.14/853,986 filed Sep. 14, 2015, now U.S. Pat. No. 10,282,452, which is aContinuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 12/419,328 filed Apr. 7, 2009,now U.S. Pat. No. 9,135,331, which claims priority to US ProvisionalApplication Ser. No. 61/042,904 filed Apr. 7, 2008, which are herebyincorporated by reference in their entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention

The present invention generally relates to data processing for searchingof databases and, more particularly, to graphic interfaces forfacilitating evaluation of and navigation through groups of items suchas results of searches containing potentially related information notnecessarily responsive to a search query such as documents, articles andthe like which may cite other such documents, articles and the like andwhich has particular utility for legal, medical, scientific and similartypes of research.

Description of the Prior Art

Since the development of the digital computer, a principal use for dataprocessing systems has been for managing and retrieving data of interestfrom one or more databases including potentially vast amounts ofinformation. Expediting the return of search results has been a majorgoal of such systems and many approaches to the development of efficientsearch engines and algorithms have been proposed with greater or lesserdegrees of success, which often varies with the nature of the subjectmatter of the data in a given database as well as the size of thedatabases which are searched and the processing power available. Ingeneral, such search engines must also be able to accommodate a searchquery that may be in a fairly rigidly expressed form (e.g. key wordswith Boolean operators) but yet can express an arbitrary search queryand also provide for manipulation of the search query (e.g. logicalcombinations of search queries in accordance with Boolean operators) toprovide some degree of control to the user over the unavoidabletrade-off between the number of returned search results, the relevanceof the information returned and the likelihood that highly germaneinformation will not be returned in response to a particular searchquery.

Unfortunately, to be reasonably certain that all highly germaneinformation is included in the search results, the search query willusually be required to be of sufficient breadth that the search resultsthemselves may be quite numerous. The searcher will then have noalternative but to review the entirety of the search results to (oftensubjectively) determine the most relevant information which is actuallysought among the search results with little or no guidance as to therelative likelihood that a given article or document will be thedocument or article actually sought or even which group of articles ordocuments will be most likely to contain it. This lack of guidance islargely because of the trade-off noted above which implies a highlikelihood of exclusion of the article or document actually sought byany limitation of the search query or results.

To expedite this process while reducing the likelihood of exclusion ofgermane results, numerous sorting algorithms and techniques have beenproposed and which have also provided widely varying degrees of success.Most such sorting arrangements, in practice, merely estimate a rating ora rank of the individual search results in accordance with a degree ofaccuracy of match to the search query that produced them and are thushighly dependent on user input based on relatively minimal informationin regard to the actual content of the database; resulting in onlymarginal effectiveness in many cases. Often such sorting algorithms andmethodologies are based on citations of other documents or articles inthe database and seek to determine relevance from some combination of orrelationship between the documents or articles containing citations toother particular documents or articles and/or the number of citations toparticular documents or articles between different groups of documentsor articles such as between databases or results of different searchesor the like. However, one particularly effective sorting arrangement isdisclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/707,911, entitled“Improved Relevance Sorting for Database Searches”, filed Nov. 8, 2000,by Edward J. Walters et al., now U.S. Pat. No. 9,471,671, and which ishereby incorporated in its entirety by reference. While the sortingprovided by this arrangement allows very substantial control oversorting and re-sorting of the search results while allowing the user tocompare results of a sort to determine further searching and/or sortingoptions, the result remains in the form of a list or lists which may notbe optimally assimilated by a user. For example, as a practical matter,a displayed list can only show a limited number of responses to a querythat may be a very small proportion of the results returned. Theefficiency of the sorting arrangement may thus cause highly relevantmaterial to be distributed over several screens; thus necessarilyexcluding some relevant items from any given screen and removing themfrom view while the user attempts to refine the search or sorting ofresults if such facilities are provided. Further, some information thatcould be important in refining the search or sorting of results may notbe directly responsive to a search and cannot be easily portrayed in amanner easily assimilable by a user.

In this regard, it has long been recognized in the data processing artsthat the amount of processing power and the efficiency of algorithmsthat can be brought to bear on a particular data processing task are oflittle effectiveness beyond the ability or capacity of a user toassimilate the results of the processing performed. This fact isparticularly characteristic of database searches in legal, medical andscientific fields where there are both objective and subjective aspectsof determination of the most germane information within particularsearch results. For example, while powerful computers running the mostefficient and effective searching and sorting algorithms, determinationof the most germane information may still require critically readingthrough and comparing at least a significant number of the returneddocuments or articles (or, in the field of legal research, publisheddecisions which are intended to be included within the terms “articles”,“documents” or “items”) rated or ranked as most highly relevant (e.g. byestimating degree of match to the search query by the numbers ofinstances of appearances of search terms or associations of searchterms, combinations of citations or the like criteria) to determinethose which are the most authoritative as well as the relationships tosubject matter and the relationship of decisions rendered to otherreported decisions. Such a detailed review may thus require many timeslonger than the searching and sorting processes and, to date, no systemor interface has proven significantly more effective than a sorted listwhich requires such review and which is subject to error (or differencesin estimated match to the search query as an indicator of likelyrelevance based on insignificant differences in scores made for rankingsearch results) while not supporting any application of subjectivity orexpertise on the part of the searcher other than through such a detailedand critical review.

Additionally, in many fields, and legal research in particular, severaldifferent types of criteria may be applied to determination ofrelevance, authority and other qualities (e.g. an indication of thehistory and/or development of the line of reasoning represented) whichmay be of interest in the information sought or may indicate that aparticular document or group of documents is germane to the search,whether or not included in a particular set of search results, and thusmay require multiple dimensions (both qualitative and quantitative) torepresent the information which may be available and of interest. Suchinformation would necessarily be omitted or obscured in known displaysof lists which only show on screen at a time; each screen containing ona partial list of search results.

Unfortunately, while visual displays have proven, over many years, to bethe most effective as well as most efficient medium for an interface topresent information to a user, such displays are limited to two (e.g.Cartesian) dimensions. While numerous graphic features (e.g. color,textures and the like visual effects, sometimes collectively referred toas attributes hereinafter) are known as well as various juxtapositionsof data for representing more than two dimensions simultaneously, eventhe most skillful interface design cannot guarantee that the informationcan be assimilated rapidly, accurately or reliably by a user in order tobe useful in selecting particular data of interest from among thepotentially large amount of information that may be returned in responseto a query and presented to a user or which is to be otherwise analyzedusing the interface. In other words, while attributes have been used toconvey additional information beyond two dimensions they have done so ina largely non-intuitive manner which does not aid in assimilation ofinformation and, moreover, as provision is made for portraying moretypes of information, do so at the substantial risk of developing imagecomplexity which can obscure information. Also, even if data is notobscured by image complexity, while a very rich amount of data andinterrelationships may, in theory be presented, the user is onlyprovided with relatively minimal control over the display and, hence,the level of expertise which must be brought to bear on the analysisprocess is extremely high. To date, no such multi-dimensional displayhas proven effective for recognition of particular relevance incombination with authority and other qualities of documents in a searchresult and which also provides highly intuitive control and selectivedata suppression to facilitate human analysis, particularly for thepurpose of refining ordering of search results for detailed review andexpediting discovery of highly germane documents included in the searchresults.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly, the present invention provides an interface forsimultaneously displaying a representation of an entire set of itemssuch as search results or even the entire contents of a database andgraphically indicating relationships between individual search resultsfrom which both relevance, chronology and authoritativeness ofdocuments, articles and/or reported legal decisions may be readilydiscerned while other information not necessarily responsive to a searchquery may be portrayed in a selectable number of additional dimensionsor information (whether or not responsive to a search query) selectivelysuppressed to facilitate review and manual ordering of search resultsfor detailed review thereof. Provision is made for a user to selectivelyintroduce or remove graphical and/or textual information in differentscreen displays and to toggle between them to observe changes which maybe of significance in conveying and assimilating information by whichcomparative relevance of items may be readily discerned.

In order to accomplish these and other objects of the invention, agraphic user interface capable of display of different types ofinformation about a set of items in a predetermined number of dimensionsis provided including indicia representing individual items of a set ofitems at respective locations on a two dimensional display area whereinthe items represent a physical object or data representing a physicalobject, and indicia which may be displayed in connection with saidlocations representing additional information pertaining to respectiveitems as additional dimensions of the graphic user interface.

In accordance with another aspect of the invention, a method ofoperating a search engine for searching a database is provided includingconfiguring data processing apparatus to include a memory for storingdata derived from parsing items in said database, and a displaygenerator for representing respective types of the data derived fromparsing the items in the database as additional dimensions on a twodimensional display, wherein a number of said dimensions representingtypes of data and which are included in an image produced on a displaydriven by the display generator is selectable by a user.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The foregoing and other objects, aspects and advantages will be betterunderstood from the following detailed description of a preferredembodiment of the invention with reference to the drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a representation of an interface screen in accordance with theinvention,

FIGS. 1A and 1B are exemplary representations of an interface screendisplaying a two-dimensional projection or other portrayal of athree-dimensional graphic interface portraying three qualities of dataor metadata in regard to individual items and additional metadata asfurther, additional dimensions,

FIG. 2 is a representation of an alternative interface screen inaccordance with the invention,

FIG. 3 is a high-level block diagram depiction of an exemplaryprocessing architecture which is useful in conveying and facilitating anunderstanding of the invention, and

FIGS. 4A, 4B, 4C, 5A, 5B, 6, 7A, 7B, 8A, 8B, 8C and 8D illustrateinterface screen images using individual and combinations of thefunctionalities of the present invention which have been found to be ofparticular utility.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT OF THE INVENTION

Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to FIG. 1, there isshown a representation of an exemplary interface screen in accordancewith the invention. As noted above, search engines and algorithms havebecome quite sophisticated and many, such as that disclosed in theabove-incorporated U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/707,911, arecapable of carrying out statistical analyses on the text and othercontent of a document, article or published decision to make an estimateof relative degree of match to a search query. Such statistical studiesmay be based on a wide variety of features of the individual items beingsearched such as the number of times particular search terms appear, theproximity/separation of search terms in the text and various aspects(e.g. number, proximity, relationships, and the like) in regard tocitations to previous documents, articles and/or published decisions.

As disclosed in the above-incorporated patent application Ser. No.09/707,911, the latter information can be obtained automatically byparsing a document (particularly a published decision) and extractingtext which is of a particular form unique to citations of otherdocuments, articles and/or published decisions. These extractedcitations and the circumstances (e.g. date, number, location, relativelocations and, if included, an indication of the nature/treatment of acited decision relative to another cited decision) may be placed intables as metadata in regard to each search result or item in thedatabase and are thus available for various forms of analysis forordering of search results by estimated degree of match to the searchquery and/or as an indicator of relevance and/or authority under eachsupported and available analysis technique, as may be selected by auser.

However, once an ordering of search results has been performed andpresented to a user in the form of a list, the actual data on which theordering is performed is effectively hidden while valuable insights intorelevance and authority might be derived therefrom. On the other hand,since such an ordering may be derived from many pieces of informationand many manipulations of that information during analysis, presentingall available information to a user may, in fact, obscure the veryinsights that might be derived and at the very least, much of the detailof such information may certainly prove distracting and/or unimportantto the discernment of relative relevance and authority of the searchresults. Thus, by presenting such data in a form in accordance with theinvention, presentation of unimportant details may be avoided or welland easily controlled at the will of the user as will be discussed belowwhile clearly presenting information which is extremely helpful in aneasily assimilated quasi-qualitative graphic form (e.g. graphic indiciahaving attributes based on quantitative data but which facilitatecomparative assimilation) or quantitatively; supporting and facilitatinga determination of which search results are likely to be most germanefor further detailed review and relative relevancy and authoritativenessof search results.

These qualities are abundantly evident in the exemplary interface screenin accordance with the invention as illustrated in FIG. 1. Specifically,in the interface screen of FIG. 1, the screen is divided into twotwo-dimensional areas 100 and 110. The lower of these areas, asdepicted, presents a secondary display 110 forming a less detailedcondensation or abridgement of the information in (or available for) theupper display and may be used in a manner similar to a so-called scrollbar or editing tool (much in the manner of editing motion picturegraphics but directed to a single, extended array of image data ratherthan a sequence of images; an example of which is illustrated in FIG. 2where the X-axis is expanded in accordance with the date range indicatedby a highlighted portion of display 110) for the presentation in theupper display 100.

The upper display 100 represents at least four dimensions ofinformation/metadata developed as described above and, preferably, asdescribed in the above-incorporated U.S. patent application Ser. No.09/707,911; which number of dimensions can preferably be increased ordecreased at the will of the user. Specifically, the horizontal axispreferably corresponds to date of the article, document, publisheddecision or other physical article or information representing such aphysical object, hereinafter sometimes collectively referred to as an“item”. The vertical axis may selectively indicate either rank inaccordance with some parameter which may be intrinsic or may bedeveloped through analysis (e.g. relevance score) or by (in the case ofpublished decisions) jurisdiction or other parameter generallyindicative of authority (e.g. court hierarchy or specific jurisdiction),or both or neither as will be discussed below. (In medical or scientificfields, the corresponding parameter might well be the reputation of thepublisher or sponsor, such as peer-reviewed journals of particularlywell-respected professional organizations such as the American MedicalAssociation or the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.)Each item is thus represented as a location of a point 120 in thetwo-dimensional area of upper display 100. A selected item 130 ispreferably located at the center (at least in the horizontal direction)of area 100 and the selection of such an item can be made, for example,from a prioritized list previously presented to the user as disclosed inthe above-incorporated U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/707,911, fromselection of another location 120 in the display of FIG. 1 as will bedescribed in greater detail below or in other ways that are notimportant to the practice of the invention but will become apparent tothose skilled in the art in view of this discussion of the invention.

Once a particular item depicted by location 130 is selected, theremainder of the items displayed at locations 120 are limited to theearlier items for which citations are included in the item representedat location 130 which are displayed to the left of location 130 andlater items represented at locations 120 to the right of the location130 which contain citations to the item represented at location 130.Thus, a third dimension of the interface of FIG. 1 is the number ofitems cited in or cited to by other items in the database or returned bya search conducted according to a given query (indicated by the numberof locations 120) which may be an indicator of, for example, the degreeof thoroughness of the search or accuracy of the search query to producea relatively comprehensive result. Since the number of items displayedmay be large, it is preferred to provide the user an option of limitingthe number of indicia representing items included in the display to anarbitrary number (e.g. 100, 50 or even a date range as described aboveor a single line of related items such as is illustrated in FIGS. 4A-4C,described below). Such an option can be easily exercised by any of anumber of known or foreseeable display features such as a so-calledpull-down menu, text or dialog box or the like as will be apparent tothose skilled in the art.

Other dimensions in the interface display 100 depicted in FIG. 1 areprovided by the concentric circles 140, 150 of varying diameter aroundlocations 120. Larger concentric circles enclosing locations canrepresent the number of citations by or to the corresponding item in theentire database (or a particular selected database which is notnecessarily the same database in which the search was conducted) or asubset of items in the same of another database, possibly as a result ofa different search. Colors or other attributes of the concentric circlesmay indicate the nature/treatment of the citation or comparativetreatment of the subject matter, such as a reversal of one publisheddecision in another published decision, may be emphasized by color,blinking or the like of the concentric circle as additional dimensionsof the display. The smaller concentric circle can represent the numberof citations to that corresponding item in another subset of the same oranother database that could be derived from, for example, yet anothersearch that could be substantive, statistical or chronological (e.g.bounded by particular dates or with one or more alternative searchterms). A preferred parameter to display in this manner is the number oftimes items represented on the screen cite to or are cited by eachother. It should also be appreciated in this regard thatpoints/locations which may also include concentric circle indicia may beoverlaid or partially overlaid but not concentric (such as are indicatedat 155) and thus represent different items returned by the search. Suchitems are readily distinguishable by a user from the concentric circlesby variance of position and the distinction can be further enhanced byapplying differences in color, brightness, outline (e.g.self-contrasting in regard to the image) or other attributes as will beapparent to those skilled in the art.

The interface of FIG. 1 is also preferably provided with a cursor 160(or other known or foreseeable selection device) which, when theinterface is in operation, may be used to select an item by location onthe display 100 (and also to manipulate the overall display 100 throughuse of display 110 such as by horizontal expansion, contraction,position and/or truncation). It is contemplated that when an itemdepicted at, for example, location 170 is selected, the display will bereconfigured by placing the depiction of that item at location 130(which can then be moved/dragged to another location on the display, ifdesired) and displaying a new pattern of dots/locations 120, includingcircles 140, 150, if desired, relative thereto.

In this regard, it should be recalled that the dots/locations displayedrepresent items cited in the selected item to the left of location 130and items citing to the selected item to the right of location 130. Thuseach item selected will have a unique pattern of locations displayedcorresponding to the unique citation pattern which corresponds to theselected item and which reflects an indicator of the authority (e.g.jurisdiction, sponsor or the like) and/or an estimate of relevance whilegraphically indicating to a user which items are likely to be importantto the search and are good candidates for early review while giving anexhaustive indication (within the bounds of the search query) of relateditems which can serve as an authority check for the search through,among other possible displayed information, indications of citations notnecessarily within the search query as alluded to above and as will bediscussed further below, (e.g. an item not returned by a search butwhich is cited by or cites to an item which is returned by the search).Additionally, the patterns can be readily compared by alternatelyselecting particular items.

In this regard, it should be noted that any items that are displayed ona common interface screen with a selected item in accordance with theinvention may have a citation relationship between them and when aselection of an item is made, the previously selected item willnecessarily remain displayed and is available for a further selection.Further, the general and comparative patterns provide not only usefulinformation to the user while effectively hiding details which mightobscure rapid evaluation and review of the search results, but an abruptchange in the number of items displayed and/or the diameter of theconcentric circles may indicate important clues to the nature of eachitem.

For instance, a seminal item considered to be of high authority may makeonly a passing reference to an issue of interest or may be particularlyrelevant only to the issue of interest or represent a termination (e.g.first instance or most recent available item) of documentation relevantto an issue of interest would likely be evident from an abrupt change inthe number of items or citations reflected in the interface image whenanother displayed item is selected. Such an abrupt change in numbers ofitems is represented in a comparison of FIG. 1 with a alternative screenof the interface in accordance with the invention such as that of FIG. 2in which the items depicted are markedly fewer in number beyond thatwhich would be expected from the time line expansion.

Note also in FIG. 2 that items which lie in the location occupied by thetext box 210 of FIG. 2 (which may be invoked, for example, by aso-called “mouse-over” where the cursor is placed on an imagerepresenting an item but no selection of the item is otherwise made) maystill be depicted at, for example, low contrast such that they are stillvisible but without compromising readability of the text presented whichmay be excerpted relevant text based on keywords or search terms anabstract or synopsis of the item or the like. The text box may alsoprovide exact citation statistics which are quantitatively indicated inthe display of FIG. 1 but from which exact numbers cannot be accuratelydetermined from the graphic representation (and thus referred to hereinas a quasi-qualitative display).

Additionally, not depicted in FIG. 1 but which is illustrated in otherFigures and will be discussed in greater detail below, relationships ofthe items represented in FIGS. 1 and 2 can be indicated by lines ofdifferent characters (e.g. solid lines or arrows, multiple or differentwidth lines, dashed or chain lines or arrows, colored or flashing linesor arrows and the like attributes singly or in combination) or havinglegends associated therewith may be provided to indicate the relativetreatment of the subject matter of one item by another (e.g. forpublished decisions, indications of the decision being affirmed,reversed, distinguished and the like could be indicated) which may besupplemented or alternatively indicated by display attributes applied tothe concentric circles, as alluded to above to provide many additionaldimensions for presentation of graphic information to a user and whichmay be selectively controlled by a user to avoid important informationbeing obscured and/or to provide emphasis of information which may beimportant without distraction of the user. Thus, the number ofdimensions which are provided and can be selectively included ininterface screens in accordance with the invention is effectivelyarbitrarily large.

Thus it is seen that the invention provides a large amount ofinformation that is directly indicative of the development of a refinedapproach to discovery of commentary in regard to issues and subjectmatter of interest which is directly useful to a user in determining acourse and order of approach to and consideration of individual searchresults far beyond the information and accuracy of estimated match tothe search query that can be delivered by a sorted list, particularlywhen it is considered that a search query must often be formulatedbroadly to reduce likelihood that the most relevant or mostauthoritative item will be missed by the search. At the same time,details of information which may clutter the display and obscure thepatterns which a user may recognize as possibly indicating usefulness(and which might even serve to identify a particular item which was onlyvaguely remembered by a user) may be suppressed, hidden to a degree ordisplayed in an alternative form which is also selectable withsubstantial flexibility in accordance with the invention as alluded toabove and will be further discussed below.

An exemplary processing architecture for developing the interface imagesand facilities described above will now be discussed in connection withFIG. 3. It should be understood that the architecture depicted in FIG. 3is exemplary and its layout has been configured in the interest ofclarity to facilitate an understanding of the basic principles of theinvention and the manner in which its functionalities as described abovecan be achieved. As such, the illustration of FIG. 3 can also beunderstood as a data flow diagram in regard to the methodology andoperation of the invention. Further, it should be understood that theprocessing architecture and operations as depicted in FIG. 3 ispreferably implemented in software both to facilitate further perfectingfeatures such as those which will be described below to be implementedand so that various combinations of functionalities and combinations ofimage features may be selectively utilized singly or in combinations,examples of which will be discussed in detail below.

In FIG. 3, a search engine 310 preferably provides functions similar tothat described in the above-incorporated U.S. Patent Application but anysearch engine capable of parsing and analyzing contents of a database,conducting a search and sorting the results in accordance with citationstatistics, date and authority/jurisdiction and ranking the searchresults in an ordered list in order of estimated match to a search querycan be used in the successful practice of the present invention. Thedata/metadata developed by the search engine by parsing the contents ofa database and at least on corresponding subset of the database such asresults of a given search are stored in a data structure 320; theparticulars of which are unimportant to the successful practice of theinvention. For clarity of illustration, however, data structure 320 isdepicted as being organized in groups of rows: group 320 a correspondingto the entire database or a portion thereof and groups 320 b-320 dcorresponding to subsets of the database corresponding to results ofdifferent search queries. Each line within each group thus correspondsto an item in the database. Particular categories of metadata,preferably including at least citation statistics for each item, a dateand jurisdiction/authority for each item and a ranking within the groupfor each item are provided and are depicted as columns. (It should benoted in this regard that there is no basis for providing a ranking ofestimated relevance or the like in regard to an entire database whichexists and has a given content regardless of any search query that maybe applied thereto to form a subset such as 320 b-320 d. Nevertheless,it has been found useful to provide for development and storage for aranking of the contents of an entire database; which ranking could bebased on parameters other than those that may be related to a particularsearch query such as the number of times a particular item has beenreturned in all search queries for all users over a given period of timeor the number of users who have accessed the full text or an excerpt ofeach item.)

It should be appreciated that all information in data structure 320 isprovided through operation of search engine 310 and the derivationthereof, beyond the assumption of the existence and availability of suchdata/metadata is not otherwise important to the successful practice ofthe invention. It should also be appreciated that data path 311corresponds to the direct display of, for example, an ordered list ofsearch results as provided, for example, by the above-incorporated U.S.patent application Ser. No. 09/707,911 without utilization of thepresent invention.

Cursor control 330 is preferably provided although the hardware used(e.g. cursor keys, mouse, joystick, track-ball, pointing transducer,touch pad or the like) is not important to the practice of the inventionas long as it is capable of controlling a cursor image 160 and providingfor selection of a location corresponding to an item 120, 130, selectionbuttons 180 or interacting with display 110. Selection of any of thesedisplay features is registered at select register 340 as indicated byrespective lines 341, 342 and 343 in FIG. 3. For example, selection ofan item at location 120 (or from a list in a prior screen) causes thatitem to be represented at location 130 (from which it can be dragged toanother location, if desired) and other search results re-displayedrelative to it in accordance with date information through selector andposition mapping arrangement 360. Selection of one of buttons 180determines the parameter (e.g. authority/jurisdiction or rank) whichwill be mapped to particular locations in the Y direction under controlof a selector/mapper 350. Thus positions of indicia in the preferablyCartesian coordinate system of display area 100 and 110 are determinedand this information is combined with citation statistics for respectivegroups (320 a-320 d) of items on an item-by-item basis at circle/icon(other shapes or indicia can be used within the scope of the presentinvention) generator 370. The same citation statistics and otherinformation for a selected item (represented at 130) or other itemdesignated by a “mouse-over” operation or the like is also supplied tooverlay generator which provides for generation of graphics box 210,215, 220 of FIG. 2 which can be overlaid or superimposed on or mixedwith the graphics generated at 370. (Relation lines alluded to above arepreferably handled in a similar manner as overlays and controlled byuser input as well.)

Alternatively, as a variant form of the invention, both vertical axisparameters can be selected and both rank and jurisdiction or any otherquality or metadata portrayed as an additional dimension (e.g. “Z”) asindicated in FIG. 1A (including indication that both buttons 180 areselected) which, as is preferred for clarity of portrayal in such acase, indicates date in the “X” direction, jurisdiction in the “Y”direction and rank in the “Z” direction; all of which are displayed as athree-dimensional orthographic (e.g. without perspective) projection ona two-dimensional display area. However, it should be understood thatother forms of portraying this additional dimension are possible and maybe much preferable if such a facility is included, an example of whichis illustrated in FIG. 1B. Specifically, in FIG. 1B, exploiting the factthat two precisely contemporaneous items are extremely unlikely tocontain citations to each other (as distinct from relation lines whichwill almost invariably have an “X” axis component, rank is portrayed asa vertical line to the “Y” position corresponding to the scalar rankwith or without termination indicia for accuracy to avoid confusion withand to improve perception in regard to such relation lines, if includedin the image. It should be appreciated that such additional dimensiondepictions may tend to clutter the screen if numerous items are depictedand providing for such visual distinction to be perceived (possiblyenhanced by additional visual attributes such as blinking) orsuppression of other dimensions of the display in accordance with theinvention will normally be desirable.

It is preferred in practice of the invention to provide for variousindividual functionalities and display features as discussed above to beused singly or in various combinations to include representation of moreor less data using correspondingly more or less information from datastructure 320. Display features and combinations which have been foundparticularly useful will be now be described with reference to FIGS.4A-8D. It should be understood that overlays such as the text boxoverlay depicted in FIG. 2 can be overlaid on any of the interfaceimages described below at any time to obtain more particular informationabout a selected item and which particular information can be selectedat the will of the user and/or specified as particular defaultinformation in regard to each variant interface screen.

The most basic variant of the interface of FIG. 1 is illustrated in FIG.4A. In this case display 100 includes a (possibly attenuated and/orscrollable with the items graphically illustrated correspondinglylimited) list 410 in the form of a text or dialog box or a pull-downmenu or the like collectively represented thereby of prioritized searchresults together with a display of a single dot or icon corresponding toeach item in the list superimposed on the graphics display in the mannerof text box 210 of FIG. 2. Alternatively, the entire display inaccordance with the invention can be superimposed on a suitablypositioned list such as that developed by the above-incorporated U.S.patent application Ser. No. 09/707,911; resulting in the attenuated listappearing at location 420. Manipulation of the list corresponds to itemselection and the two-dimensional mapping of items will becorrespondingly altered. This interface screen and manipulation isparticularly useful for facilitating comparison of citation patternsbetween items returned in the search result. For purposes of thisinterface screen, concentric circles are preferably suppressed by, forexample, interrupting the citation statistics data (but not the citationdata). Once a particular citation pattern of interest is determined, theconcentric circle features can be restored by restoring (preferably inselected stages) the citation statistics input to circle/icon imagegenerator 370 to result in the image discussed above in connection withFIG. 1 as illustrated in FIGS. 4B and 4C. This manipulation is one ofmany; representative ones of which will be discussed below, in whichrelatively limited information can be initially displayed to a user and,if considered to be potentially indicative of items germane to thesearch or evaluation thereof, additional information can be reintroducedin stages using additional display dimensions to confirm or reject thatline of inquiry or to gain insight regarding search results frominformation about search results which is not necessarily responsive toa query, itself, to develop other searches or lines of inquiry.

Another variant interface image screen is derived from the interfacescreen of FIG. 1 by providing for direct selection of either the rightor left half of the screen thus limiting the graphic pattern to itemsciting to the selected item or cited by the selected item respectivelyas depicted in FIGS. 5A and 5B. In FIG. 5A, the left half of a screensuch as that of FIG. 1 is displayed relative to selected item 130. Forpurposes of illustration of a particularly useful manipulation of theinterface in accordance with the invention, in FIG. 5B a different itemis selected and indicated by reference numeral 130 and thus FIG. 5Bdisplays the same items as FIG. 5A but as the right half of the screen.This screen may be derived by suitable manipulation or interaction withdisplay 110 discussed above, but it is preferred in view of the utilityof this display to provide more direct access to it by, for example,keyboard or menu selection. It should be noted in latter regard wherethis variant interface screen is controlled other than through display110 (e.g. by a particular key stroke control) that display 110 is notincluded in the on-screen presentation to a user. It should also benoted that the selected item which differs between FIG. 5A and FIG. 5Bcan be discerned by clustering of relation lines or arrows in regard toan item depicted at the edge of the interface screen because theselected item is the item being analyzed at any given time and otherrelation lines of arrows are preferably suppressed to prevent or reducecongestion of the image. Thus, the item having its center at the left orright border of the interface screen and the greatest number of relationlines emanating therefrom or the greatest number of relation arrowspointing to or from it is necessarily the selected item.

Other variants of interface images in accordance with the presentinvention alter the data represented by the concentric circle or circlesthat may be included in an image similar to FIG. 1 as illustrated bycomparison of FIGS. 4B and 4C. It has been found particularly useful tofacilitate user evaluation of search results to have a concentric circleto represent all items in the database cited by and/or citing to theselected item and a small circle representing the subset of cases whichare cited by or cite to the selected case (e.g. those on the screen).However, display of concentric circles can reflect raw number ofcitations for similar or different groups of items (e.g. 320 a-320 d) asin FIG. 1. It has also been found useful to provide for alteration ofthe circle sizes to reflect such numbers of items or actual citationnumbers for comparison and it is preferred to provide for toggling backand forth as illustrated by a double arrow in FIG. 6 between any ofthese different displays representing statistics of different underlyingcitation statistics to facilitate comparisons. Such differences mayconvey several different types of information to a user such as theexistence of another line of related items (e.g. published opinions) orthe comparative quality of search queries in regard to a particularissue of specific subject matter (determination of which may and islikely to be facilitated by invoking text window 210 of FIG. 2 by asimple and intuitive “mouse-over” operation or the like). The textwindow 210 may then be manipulated by, for example, scrolling orsequencing through excerpts of text containing search terms).

Another variant interface screen illustrated in FIGS. 7A and 7B whichhas been found useful is very similar in appearance to that of FIG. 1but differs therefrom by not referencing the mapping to a selected itembut simply applied to any arbitrary group of items such as a searchresult, database or portion of a database. In such a case, the mappingis determined based on the earliest and latest items in the group andthe time line of the display adjusted accordingly. This interface screenis useful for obtaining information concerning the temporal distributionof items report in response to a search query and may be emphasized bysuppressing both the authority and relevance information otherwiseindicated by the “Y” dimension of the display; thus collapsing thedisplay in the vertical direction into a single horizontal line.Grouping of items made more evident by such a manipulation maycorrespond to particular economic, political or other historicalcircumstances which may provide insight into rationales underlyingparticular lines of reasoning or subject matter. A particular line ofsequential citations may be indicated by alphanumeric designations orother indicia which may also be applied to locations representingreturned search items in any other interface screen as illustrated forexample, in FIGS. 4A-4C.

Again, as a perfecting feature of the invention which is not necessaryto its practice in accordance with its most basic principles is theprovision of relationship lines indicating the nature of the citationand/or the treatment thereof in the citing item as illustrated bycomparison of FIGS. 7A and 7B, which may be overlaid on any interfacescreen as an additional dimension thereof. Such lines may tend toclutter the screen, however, as illustrated in FIG. 8D for a screen inwhich relatively few items and two lines of relationships with branchingpatterns which may indicate issues that may distinguish items inparticular ways are represented. It is therefore preferred to providefor suppression of some lines or to emphasize some types of patterns,some of which can be adaptively learned by the invention from usagepatterns in a manner well-understood in the art. For example, FIG. 8Ashows only citations in and citations to a selected item by use ofarrows. FIG. 8B illustrates a line of cases having sequential citationsand another group where a plurality of precedent items were cited/reliedupon in a single item. FIG. 8C illustrates a longer sequence of itemswhere there has been sequentially reduced citation over time in latercitations. Again, with experience, patterns of such lines or generaltendencies and/or characteristics discernible in the pattern orcomparative patterns (which may also be toggled to facilitate comparisonin the manner of FIG. 6) of such lines can be used to substantialadvantage in determining the relative order in which items returned by asearch should be reviewed.

In view of the foregoing, it is seen that the graphic interface of theinvention provides an easily used, highly informative depiction ofvarious qualities of items (as may be selectively introduced into orremoved from an interface image at the will of the user) which may be,for example, returned in response to a search query which can be easilyused and navigated to allow a user to determine an approach to review ofindividual items and which can greatly expedite that process.Relationships of citations and citation statistics may be quantitativelyportrayed but qualitatively and/or comparatively assimilated by a userthrough portrayal in an analog, quasi-qualitative fashion and/or inconnection with various graphic attributes with accurate quantitativecitation statistics and citation relationship information readilyavailable. By the same token, the level of information presented can bereadily and rapidly altered so that information that the user may findrelevant is not obscured or the screen unduly cluttered, causingdistraction. Moreover, the information which may be suppressed may bereintroduced by degrees at the will of the user to refine choices forreview of items returned by a search. That is, in a multidimensionaldisplay as provided by the invention, the user is provided with thecapacity to easily delete dimensions at will and to restore them, asdesired, to assist in developing an understanding of the aspects ofinterrelationships between the subject matter of individual itemsreturned by a search query (which aspects may be too subtle orqualitative to express in an effective search query that can bedetermined, with confidence, not to exclude germane items) to assist inidentifying particularly germane items among search results.

While the invention has been described in terms of a single preferredembodiment, those skilled in the art will recognize that the inventioncan be practiced with modification within the spirit and scope of theappended claims.

1. A method of displaying information about a set of items, the method comprising: displaying, on a graphical user interface, an image comprising a plurality of types of information about a set of items; and depicting, on the graphical user interface, a plurality of dimensions of the image, wherein the plurality of dimensions comprises a plurality of axes, and wherein each of the plurality of axes represents at least one type of information in the plurality of types of information.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of axes reflects content of a plurality of items in the set of items.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of axes reflects one or more relationships between a plurality of items in the set of items.
 4. The method of claim 1, further comprising: selectively suppressing display of one or more types of information in the plurality of types of information.
 5. The method of claim 1, further comprising: displaying a set of icons located on a plane defined by a first axis and a second axis in the plurality of axes, wherein the set of icons represents a plurality of subject items, and wherein each subject item in the plurality of subject items represents at least one of: a physical object, and data representing a physical object.
 6. The method of claim 5, further comprising: depicting, on the plurality of dimensions, one or more connectors between members of the set of icons, thereby indicating a relation therebetween.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the one or more connectors comprises an arrow, and wherein the relation comprises a citation relation.
 8. The method of claim 6, further comprising: arranging a selected member of the set of icons such that the selected member contacts a border depicted on the graphical user interface.
 9. The method of claim 5, further comprising: depicting, on the graphical user interface, at least one of line segments and arrows extending radially from at least one icon in the set of icons.
 10. The method of claim 9, wherein a length of a given one of the line segments or arrows indicates a magnitude of a type of information.
 11. A system for displaying information about a set of items, the system comprising: at least one computer comprising at least one processor operatively connected to at least one non-transitory, computer readable medium, the at least one non-transitory computer readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon, wherein, when executed by the at least one processor, the computer executable instructions carry out a set of steps comprising: selecting at least two dimensions to be displayed; displaying, in the at least two dimensions on a graphical user interface, an image comprising a plurality of types of information about a set of items; depicting, as a first dimension of the at least two dimensions, a first axis representing time; depicting, as a second dimension of the at least two dimensions, a second axis representing either a ranking or a jurisdiction; and depicting, at predetermined locations on the graphical user interface, indicia representing a plurality of items from the set of items, wherein each item of the one or more items represents either a physical object or data representing a physical object.
 12. The system of claim 11, wherein the set of steps further comprises: displaying a plurality of visual attributes of the indicia.
 13. The system of claim 12, wherein the set of steps further comprises: receiving a designation of one indicium in the indicia.
 14. The system of claim 13, wherein the set of steps further comprises: arranging remaining ones of the indicia within a two-dimensional display area based on a location of the designated indicium.
 15. The system of claim 13, wherein the set of steps further comprises: selectively suppressing display of at least one of the plurality of types of information.
 16. A system for displaying information about a set of items, the system comprising: at least one computer comprising at least one processor operatively connected to at least one non-transitory, computer readable medium, the at least one non-transitory computer readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon, wherein, when executed by the at least one processor, the computer executable instructions carry out a set of steps comprising: generating an image; displaying the image and a plurality of dimensions of the image, wherein the displaying comprises: depicting a plurality of axes, wherein each of the plurality of axes: corresponds to one of the plurality of dimensions, represents one or more types of information associated with individual items in the set of items, and reflects content of, or relationships between, the individual items; selectively suppressing display of at least one of the one or more types of information; and selectively suppressing display of at least one of the plurality of dimensions.
 17. The system of claim 16, wherein the one or more types of information is selected by a user.
 18. The system of claim 16, wherein the displaying the image and the plurality of dimensions of the image further comprises: depicting, on at least one of the plurality of dimensions, indicia representing a plurality of items from the set of items, wherein each item in the plurality of items represents either a physical object or data representing a physical object.
 19. The system of claim 18, wherein the indicia comprise one or more concentric shapes that reflect content of the plurality of items.
 20. The system of claim 18, wherein the indicia comprise one or more concentric shapes that reflect relationships between the plurality of items. 